Media Literacy-It’s only labor

We’ll always have our work cut out for us insofar as corporate perspectives in the corporate media. In our Sunday paper, March 1, 2009, The AP effectively reports that it is labor that must shoulder the changes that must happen in the auto industry. An excerpt from ‘Steel’s revival a map for Detroit':

Like steel before the shakeout, Detroit automakers are beset by foreign competition, high labor costs, a huge number of retirees and union work rules that place them at a competitive disadvantage to the Japanese.

No mention, of couse, of failed executive policies such as missing creating hybrid vehicles and focusing on suv production. No mention, of course, that executive pay vs. even skilled worker is still such an ever widening gap. There is, of course, no mention that a foreign or domestic company effectively utilizes America’s anti-union or union-resistant laws to keep workers unsettled and on the defensive as a whole. There is no mention that some Republicans efforts to mislead the American public about just how many dollars an hour a worker supposedly makes (or is supported by or costs the auto company). Hell, this kind of article feeds right into every anti-union person I know and would only make them bristle more without apply those very same critiques to executives and management.

We certainly have our work cut out for us as far as media literacy goes.